kristen stewart

Sundance Institute completed its feature film lineup for the 2016 Sundance Film Festival with the highly anticipated narratives, documentaries, episodic work and events in the Premieres, Documentary Premieres, Spotlight, Sundance Kids and Special Events sections.

Before her gig in the TWILIGHT franchise turned Kristen Stewart into a global celebrity, she had already established herself as a noteworthy screen presence in much smaller projects, with her serious, distant gaze making her ideally positioned to play lost and frustrated young women. There’s a glimmer of that subdued talent in CAMP X-RAY, the debut feature of writer-director Peter Sattler that finds Stewart in the excessively unglamorous role of a Guantanamo Bay guard. Unfortunately, Sattler’s frustratingly on-the-nose screenplay — which finds Stewart’s character forming an unlikely bond with an uncooperative detainee (Peyman Moadi) — only succeeds at emphasizing her talent in an otherwise half-baked drama.

Much of this week’s news was slightly infuriating: Animals get birth control but humans don’t? The mistress gets punished but the married man doesn’t? Rapists get rights but their victims don’t? Aaarrrggghhh!

Every week there are dozens of film news stories. We read them all and bring you the five most important ones in the single most important blog post you’ll ever read (today [at this moment]). This week: dreams, festivals, raids and teen idols.

OK, so maybe love is a strong word for North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s marriage. But who knows what goes on behind closed doors? In Scotland, doors might be opening for gay couples who wish to marry. Which is pretty much the last country we would have expected it from (except maybe North Korea… and Iran… OK, OK, the Scots aren’t that bad). But while it’s getting gradually easier to marry a same-sex partner across the globe (to the moon and back, even — thanks, Sally Ride), it’s not getting any easier to be a VP in the U.S. (or to get away with cheating if you’re a celebrity, for that matter).

I might be the best, most impartial judge around when it comes to a face off between Twilight and The Hunger Games, and their respective movie adaptations. I’ve never read the books, never seen any of the movies and never harbored a secret crush on any of the actors – for real (sorry Taylor Lautner, I know you’re kind of a big deal with pre-teens and their moms, but I just don’t get it). I do know the basic story lines, though. One’s got vampires and werewolves and shit, and the other one’s got sci-fi teenagers fighting to the death in a gladiator-meets-Tron kinda deal. Those are the obvious things, but do you wanna know the other major difference? One looks like it suuuucks…

Be thankful you’re not in a wildly popular film franchise. It can be career suicide! Yes, you get to be incredibly famous and make tons of money—as long as you stay safely within that franchise and keep delivering the same role to a young audience hungry for the repetition. Just as younger LORD OF THE RINGS cast members have had a hard time striking gold outside that series of lucrative adventures, so have the TWILIGHT gang been finding that not only do vampires suck, but out-of-the-box career ops can too.

With THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN Part 1 poised to make trillions starting November 18, it has to be bittersweet for the cast, who’ve struggled to break the dawn for themselves by scoring with non-Twilight projects (and they’re gonna need some really soon).

Any show featuring a full gimp suit has promise: a review of “American Horror Story” that took the words right out of our mouth.
Four lessons men can learn from Justin Beiber on being better boyfriends.
The Washington DC International LGBT Film Festival kicks off tonight.